A Fluid Dynamics Approach to Cosmology Incorporating a Unified Theory of Acoustics and Electromagnetic Radiation

Abstract

My investigation into the wave characteristics of electromagnetic and acoustic radiation commenced with the familiar statement that for all practical purposes light, together with all electromagnetic radiation, unlike sound, propagates in a void. It is known that sound propagation arises from a disturbance to the thermal equilibrium of ordinary molecular and atomic matter, whereas the structure of ordinary matter is almost transparent to electromagnetic radiation. This results from the enormous difference between the propagation speeds of sound and light and the resulting differences in their wavelengths for a given frequency. The void, by definition, means space devoid of all matter. Since observers on Earth are able to see distant stars and galaxies from which radiation has travelled billions of kilometres and over time intervals of the order of the age of the Universe, it is compelling to argue that between Earth and distant stars and galaxies this intergalactic space is almost a void through which electromagnetic radiation propagates at the constant speed of light. Indeed these two assumptions formed the basis for the two hypotheses that Einstein introduced, a hundred years ago, on which to build his theories of Special and General Relativity, and on which all modern physics is based. From a study of Einstein’s work, we learn that these assumptions were not accepted without considerable debate, with respect to both the theoretical and experimental implications, since they were in conflict with the recognised view held by all scientists that the Universe contained a massless ether which could support action at a distance, as required by Newton in his work on gravitation, and the propagation of electromagnetic waves, as required by Maxwell. Indeed Einstein recognised that although powerful arguments existed for the nonexistence of an ether, he was convinced some form of nonphysical ether existed in a void. A modern view, as expressed by Pismen, is ‘After being abolished by modern physics, the ether has been incarnated in post-modernity as the field theoretical vacuum, which far from being void, is envisaged as a non-linear medium of a complex, and as yet unknown, nature. The structure of the vacuum may hold the key to the structure of both the elementary particles and the universe as a whole.’ Figure 1 shows the visible matter in the early Universe. The conjecture is that the space between the galaxies is rarefied matter, including ‘dark matter’. This, I believe, reopens the discussion on the presence throughout space of a very rarefied, but not necessarily uniform, medium, which in the past was thought of as the ‘ether’. However, that was massless, whereas here we refer to ‘dark matter’, which not only